The present invention relates to a web application managing method and a web system. In particular, the present invention relates to a management method, and web system, concerning evaluation and improvement of operability of web applications.
In recent years, various services are implemented by using web applications. They are utilized in a large number of scenes such as B2C (Business to Consumer), B2B (Business to Business), and B2E (Business to Employee) because of convenience that they can be utilized by using only a widespread web browser.
Development environments of web applications have been diversified and enriched. In other words, owing to spread of the lightweight script language and provision of low-cost development environments which are rich in functions, it has become possible for a person or an enterprise other than big enterprises which are rich in experts and resources to develop a web application and provide service on the web. Web service of user participation type has also appeared. It has become frequent that the case where contents provided by the web service dynamically change is also seen. The utilization scene of the web service exhibits spread.
From such a background, a large number of similar services are provided, and competition between services has become fierce. Because of repletion of the development enrichment described above, a great difference is disappearing in any service in the aspect of the function. For winning in the competition between services, easiness to use (operability) of the user has become important. A technique for automatically improving the operability is demanded especially to cope with the case where contents dynamically change.
On the other hand, in a method frequently used as the conventional art, a video image of the user's operation on the web application is picked up and an expert watches the video image and evaluates the operability. Since it takes time, however, this method is not suitable for a large amount of continuous evaluation. In addition, since the expert is relied upon to evaluate the operability, a bias is caused in the aspect of evaluation precision or stability is insufficient. The method has these problems.
For example, in JP-A-2004-86373,a technique of generating an operation pattern in accordance with a guide line beforehand, comparing user's operation with the operation pattern, judging an error pattern, and displaying the guide line is disclosed. This technique has two problems. A first problem is a problem of a high cost required to generate the operation pattern in accordance with the guide line. A second problem is a problem that a measure to dynamically changing contents is insufficient. As for the second problem, it is difficult from the aspect of the cost to change the guide line in conformity with dynamically changing contents. In addition, a suitable guidance cannot be given for dynamically changing contents by judging a difference in operation pattern to be an error pattern and guiding to the operation according to the guide line. They are especially problems.
In JP-A-2002-183369, a method of causing the user to conduct operation in accordance with a directive, detecting an operations which took a long time or an operation which is abound with errors, and making a proposal for improvement is disclosed. In this method, however, it is necessary to previously generate an operation record according to a directive. For dynamically changing contents, it is also necessary to generate a record of operations according to a directive in conformity with the dynamically changing contents. If an operation requires a time which remarkably exceeds a time considered to be suitable from the view of human engineering, the operation is defined as time-consuming operation. However, it is doubtful whether detection with sufficiently high precision can be conducted with this method.